Tuesday, July 29, 2014

Love Her, Hate Her, But You Can’t Unfriend Her!


You have been there. That faithful day your mom sent you a Facebook request. You stared at the request for minutes, or may be hours depending on how much of your life was online. Of course, you did not get to stare at it for days because you got a call from your mom the same day asking if you got her friend request and if yes, why you hadn’t accepted it when all your cousins had. You explained to your mom that you were not a loser like your cousins who spent 24x7 on Facebook and did not know the existence of the term ‘work ethics.’ You reminded her that you were a vital part of a multibillion dollar company and every minute you spent doing anything other than work, your company’s share price dropped by few cents. You asked her, not without tinge of sarcasm, if these cousins knew how many zeros were there in a billion. (Sorry, I digress. But these cousins, I tell you!). In any case, you did an Alt+Tab after the call and grudgingly accepted the request. Within the next 10 minutes, your mom wrote on your wall for the first time:'

Hi sweetie! Just saw all your updates for the day. Daddy and I wonder what the closing share price of your company is. Love, Mom.

Mommy – 1. You – 0.

The next day your friend called you to inform you that he had gotten your mom’s “Friend Request” and he thought it was incredibly cool to have a tech-savvy mommy. You could hear him smirking over the phone. In the next few days, your news feed was full of:

@YourMommy just became friends with @YetAnotherFriend

You realized where this was heading. Those teenage years when she phoned the moms of every one of your friends if you were late by five minutes to reach home came rushing back to your memory. Followed closely by those horrific college years when she SMSed all your friends asking about your whereabouts if you failed to answer your phone couple of times. And now, Facebook! God, she always found a way! You couldn’t just sit back and wave good-bye to your privacy. So you called her and told her that you were an adult and it was not a good idea she was befriending everyone on your friend’s list.

Your mom was capable of being melodramatic at very short notice. “It is ok, dear. You have always been like this. You always wanted to keep your life away from your own mother who gave birth to you. I just thought you would be proud of me. It is fine – I will stay away from Facebook.”

Your dad called you in the evening. “Your mom is very hurt. You know how much she loves you. You know she means only well. Why do you have to hurt her this way? Do you know how much she had to sacrifice to bring you up? For instance, once when you were 2…”

“No, no dad. I was in a bad mood before. Tell her I am absolutely fine with whatever she does on Facebook! In fact all my friends are jealous my mom is so cool.” You got another FB update seconds after you disconnected your dad’s call, which made you wonder if all your dad told your mom was “Issue solved, now get me my tea.”

Oh my sweetie pie. You know I love you always. Love, your ‘cool’ mom.

Mommy – 2. You – 0.

You then knew that it was real. You immediately set to clean up your act. You untagged yourselves from pictures that suggested (1) alcoholism, (2) promiscuity and (3) absolute insanity. You then deleted all the posts were you shared ‘inappropriate’ jokes. You also ensured that your relationship status was set to whatever your mom thought it was. Now at least you won’t be disowned, or more importantly, stricken off the will.

The next day your news feed was covered with photos from your FB albums as your mom religiously liked every single picture you ever uploaded. Every. Single. Picture. You were fairly happy you cleaned up your act on time. But you became very upset when a friend posted a message:

Guess whose mommy just joined Facebook!!! ROFL!!!

57 liked the message in 3 minutes. The world was full of Judases.

You called your mother and told her that you were overwhelmed by her never ending love for you and you were touched by the fact that she was liking all your pictures, BUT STOP IT ALREADY! Your mom stayed away for few days and just as you started to rest in the illusionary cloud of the virtual realm:

@YourMommy has uploaded a picture of you.  Look sweetie what I found as I was going through the old album yesterday. You look sooooo cute dressed up as a monkey.

@You: Really, mom? Really?

@YourMommy: I am so happy you asked me to stay off Facebook for few days. @YourCousin taught me how to scan old pictures. Now I have so many cute pictures of you to upload. Love, Mom

Mommy – 3. You – (-1). Cousin – dead.

Your and your mom’s Facebook journey continued almost uneventful for a while. Which was to say you uploaded nothing, shared nothing, commented on nothing and untagged yourself from new pictures that risked disownment. You watched in horror as she shared humongous number of idiotic things every day – from five-headed snakes to the Lord’s image in clouds that you had to re-share within 10 minutes (else very very bad things would happen to you). You rubbed your arms in evil delight as your friends’ moms started joining Facebook.

And just as you thought your life could not get worse, you got an email saying:

@YourDad just joined Facebook.

@YourDad sent you a Friend Request. Accept or Decline

Now you felt complete. Your whole family was on Facebook. Your distant uncles and aunts were sending you Farmville and Candy Crush requests. Your neighbors were commenting “Cute” on your pictures. All kind of relatives whom you probably met last as a child when they were pulling your cheeks were complaining to your mom that you were not accepting their friend requests.
You searched for the ‘Deactivate’ button on the screen. If you wanted to be amidst all these wonderful people, you would have stayed home, wouldn’t you?

You will perhaps get back to Facebook the day you feel the need for that warm fuzzy feeling only 
family can give you. Which will be never.

We don’t need to look far to figure out what would cause the eventual downfall of Facebook.



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